The East Enders' angel

In the East End they still remember. More than half a century has passed since Hitler's bombs rained down on London's docks and the homes all around, killing thousands. But they cherish the memory of the Queen Mother, the woman who did more than any other to keep spirits up during the darkest days of the Second World War.

Harry Slough is 70 now, but remembers her wartime visit clearly. "The Queen and the King came to see us in Limehouse. I was just a kid and I can remember them coming in their posh car. She was a lovely lady. We chased after their car and we were lucky to do so, we were the ones that survived. So many didn't."

Harry was 12 when the war ended. He went on to become a Smithfield Market porter and then a docker in the East End. He said: "We lived in Carr Street next to the Gallant Hussar pub and I went to Greencoat School in Whitehorse Street. We were lucky. There were blasts and impacts at the school and at home, but we survived."

Alan Olssen, 67, remembers the Queen Mother and King George VI visiting Limehouse. He said: "We watched her come down Commercial Road in her posh car and chased it up the street waving flags and shouting. Great lady, she was."

The East End was not, of course, the only place in Britain that suffered heavy losses from the bombing; nor was it the only place that the then Queen visited in her mission to raise morale. Far from it: that small, friendly figure, stepping carefully among the broken masonry as she spoke her words of comfort, became a familiar sight in cities as far afield as Bristol, Cardiff and Coventry.

But in those early days of the Blitz, when the East End suffered such terrible losses, a special bond was forged between the Queen and one of the poorest, most deprived parts of her husband's kingdom. She realised its significance when she made her famous remark after Buckingham Palace suffered a direct hit in September 1940. "I'm glad," she said. "It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face."

But the real reason she could look them in the face was because the King and Queen had early on taken the decision to stick out the war in London, whatever the danger. When it was suggested that the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret should be sent to the safety of Canada, she replied: "The children could not go without me. I could not leave the King, and the King would never go."

As she toured London's bombsites, often with unexploded bombs nearby, the Queen Mother saw some harrowing sights. On the night of 10 September 1940, a bomb fell on a school in Canning Town that was sheltering 500 homeless people awaiting evacuation: more than 70 were killed. Three days later the King and Queen visited the site - the day Buckingham Palace was hit.

Fifty years later, as part of her 90th birthday celebrations, the Queen Mother unveiled a memorial plaque at Hallsville School, once Agate Street Infants, before it was wiped off the map. Old East Enders who could remember her last visit came out to see her. "When we saw the Queen that day, everybody lost their downheartedness," said Bill Bartley. "There was still an air raid on when she walked through the rubble. I always thought the world of her. She doesn't sit back pompous-like. I remember her putting her arm round people covered in blood and grime and consoling them. I feel she knows what our lives were like."

It was not just the fact that she was royalty that was significant. As Mr Bartley said that day: "Do you know, I can't remember the King being there at all. She was great that day."

She had a gift. She could talk and she could listen, but above all, she cared. She would listen to a poor victim sobbing out their heart-rending story, and tears would well up in her eyes.

Stories abounded of her thoughtfulness around the bomb sites. A woman was in distress because her frightened dog refused to budge from a hole in the debris. "Perhaps I can try," said the Queen. "I am rather good with dogs."

Another time a woman with a disabled arm was trying to dress her baby while the local officials accompanying the Queen looked on. "Let me help," she said, and took the baby.

No wonder the East End loved her. One woman wrote to Barbara Cartland: "The Queen came down yesterday. She said to me: 'I am so sorry. I know what you are feeling.' It was like the voice of an angel. There's never been a lady like her."

Or, as one Cockney woman put it more succinctly: "Ain't she lovely! Oh, ain't she just bloody lovely!"

In a recent biography of the Queen Mother, Chris Friend, Pearly King of the Isle of Dogs and Poplar, recalled her visits. "I was about 13, and it is a day I will never forget. She had a word for everybody. She came and chatted as if she had known them all her life. It was a real morale booster to the East End. My mother and her friends were in tears, something I had never seen before. She was fabulous."

The war ended, but the special relationship between the Queen Mother and the East End endured. Every year, a huge cake would arrive at Clarence House on her birthday with the compliments of those she comforted through those terrible times.

The Queen Mother kept her commitment to the East End, visiting whenever she could. One of her most famous visits was to the Queen's Head pub in Flamborough Street, Limehouse, in 1987. Aged 87 at the time, she stopped at the pub owned by Young and Co and pulled, then supped, a pint of their Special bitter.

The then landlord of the Queen's Head was Vic Jones. He said: "I was told three months before that it was happening and I was warned not to tell anyone until 10 days beforehand. My family had been in the trade since 1881 - they ran the Bulls Head in Duckett Street. But the Blitz hit us badly. We lost 22 members of the family - grandfather, uncles, cousins.

"So it did feel relevant when the Palace approached me about her visit. The Palace bloke said: 'Don't worry. She will make you feel at ease.' I didn't believe him. But he was right. She was terrific. You have to remember she was an old lady. I shook her hand and she felt like a sparrow and I was so scared I might crush her. I asked her what she wanted to drink and she asked for a pint of Special. She poured it herself and she knocked back at least three-quarters of it. I have to say I was impressed."

Critics might have felt that such events verged on caricature, but older East Enders knew the bond lay deeper than pictures of the Queen Mum - Gawd Bless Her - pulling pints.

The Queen Mother never forgot. Less than three months before her 99th birthday she unveiled a memorial at St Paul's Cathedral - the result of an Evening Standard campaign - to the civilians who died during the bombing of London. "Their undaunted spirit and courage allowed them to take the Blitz as it came," she said. "They defied it. Today we remember them."

They remembered too. In the words of Mr Friend, the Pearly King: "We never forgot her and she never forgot us. She was the greatest royal favourite there has ever been, and she would always be Number One."

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